On April 10, 1975, a black golfer broke down a wall. His name was Lee Elder. That day, Thursday, he placed his ball in the tee from hole one of the select Augusta National course, in Georgia (USA), on the first day of the Masters. They all looked at him. He was nervous despite being an experienced player in his 40s. It was not be for lowerly. When he landed the blow he had rewritten history. Elder then became the first black player to contest the Augusta Masters, culminating a long way of fighting against prejudice and opening a new one through which athletes such as Tiger Woods. This Monday, the pioneer passed away at the age of 87.
Elder, the youngest of 10 siblings born in Dallas, was orphaned at age nine. His father died in World War II. His mother, three months later. A struggle for survival began that led little Lee to change the school for a golf course, first in charge of simple maintenance tasks; then when he moved with his aunt to Los Angeles to work as a shopping cart. Thus began his sports career. To break through, he didn’t just have to overcome rivals on the court. Harder than that was facing racism. Some clubs would not let him in the dressing room and he had to change in the parking lot. Other times his ball would mysteriously disappear when he made the first hit. Everything was sticks in the wheels, but also a perseverance to resist. When he won the Monsanto Open in 1974, victory had an extra prize: an invitation to the next Augusta Masters. “There were many pressures and complaints”, I remembered in April 2019 in EL PAÍS; “A lot of people didn’t like a black man playing the Masters. They threatened me. He received letters and phone calls. We had to rent two houses for the tournament ”. Augusta was not just any square, but a select club with armored doors for decades by white men: it was not until 1990 that a black member (Ron Towsend) was admitted, Tiger Woods was the first colored winner in 1997, and Condoleeza Rice, Darla Moore and Virginia Rometty entered as the first female members in 2012.
At eight over par, Lee Elder missed the cut. “There were a lot of people on me, it was hard for me to focus on the game,” he explained. But the door had been knocked down. Four years later, he was the first black golfer to play the Ryder Cup, and he was also the first to receive the Bob Jones Award, the highest decoration of the American federation. It took Augusta 45 years, until 2020, to pay tribute to him. And last April he formed with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player at the honorary start of the Masters.
In 1997, Lee Elder saw Tiger win his first big on the field. “It was a source of pride because inside me I knew that part of that had started with other black players who opened a path. I was happy to be an example ”, he recalled two years ago in this newspaper. Lee was born the same year the Masters was created, 1934, and debuted in the same year Tiger was born, 1975. Now, as Woods tries to play again after a car accident, golf is reminiscent of one of its pioneers.
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